


Sun Kiss Him

by elDiablito



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Universe, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 15:15:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9241139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elDiablito/pseuds/elDiablito
Summary: A short fic in which Lance misses sunlight on his skin and Hunk brings sunlight to him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was a present put together in haste for my dear friend Ronnie/Coquiwi who is also an amazing artist and number one Hance stan. So naturally, here's some Hance love. 
> 
> I'm still getting used to writing Voltron fic and exploring these characters, so I hope this does this lovely pair justice! 
> 
> Happy Birthday Ronnie! <3 You're a meme and I love you.

_It's just the lighting on the ship!_ Lance tells himself, peering at his reflection in the mirror.  _It's just unflattering is all._

 

Freshly showered, water glints and drips off his hair as he turns his head this way and that, comparing the skin of his face to his neck, to his shoulders and chest. Meant to simulate natural light--though natural light of a cold, piercing climate it seems at times--the lighting on the castle ship radiated requisite amounts of UVB for Vitamin D production but provided nothing in the way of warmth. Lance can't blame the lack of real sunlight for his depression--that was another can of worms to open when the fighting ceased, if ever--but the more he examines his complexion the more he is sure he can blame it for his pallor. It was not a blue cast of lighting that made him look pale but that he was in fact losing the sun kissed glow he'd taken with him from the garrison--one of the last reminders of earth he carried with him. 

 

Traveling for months in deep space, bouncing from star system to star system in an effort to deter tracking by the Galra empire and form a battle strategy, Lance and the crew had barely touched planetary ground in weeks and when they had it had been in the cloak of a twin-mooned night, a smattering of stars arching overhead and dripping a chill light. The crew had landed to examine the hull of the castle ship where a stray meteor had grazed the exterior. Allura had been hesitant to land, but Shiro had noticed the way the other Paladins had been pacing around the ship, gazing out windows into the black universe, barely touching their food. It was decided that maintenance of both ship and crew were priority over avoidance of the Galra right now, and they landed.

 

As nearby Hunk and Pidge were packing up their tools from reinforcing the ship siding where it had been punctured, if only slightly, Lance had tilted back his head, gazing up at the moons before closing his eyes. He imagined, even on the dark, desert planet, the sensation of a warm breeze on his skin and sunlight pouring over his eyelids and illuminating them red inside. He had been unaware of the gaze Hunk had settled on him then, wrench in one hand and the other unconsciously curling against his diaphragm like a weight had sunk there. The moment passed, Lance shaking off his melancholy like a dog with water, and had Hunk returned to packing tools, distracted by the thought of Lance--drenched in starlight with an expression like a man desperate for air--for the remainder of the night. 

 

Poised before the sink, Lance drops his hands from his face--which he was kneading as though he could push color back into his flesh--and rests them on the sides of the bowl, allowing water to trail down the sharp slope of his nose, weigh down his eyelashes, diffuse on his lower lip, which protrudes subconsciously. He sighs then feels silly when he does. He dresses quickly in worn thin civilian clothes and joins the others for breakfast, cloaked in the camouflage of a bright smile. 

 

~*~

 

Lance is trying to focus on his target practice but can't ignore the pressure of Hunk's stare on his back. He measures his breathing, squints as he aims, then flexes his finger on the trigger to--

 

"What's been going on, Lance?" Hunk's voice, though mild, jolts him like a taser, and he jumps, flubbing his shot and firing a laser beam at he top left corner of his target. He places the gun on the counter between him and the firing range with a huff, leveling a peevish stare at Hunk. 

 

He can't maintain the tension in his expression though: not with the way Hunk's eyes search him like a message to decrypt, or with the way one arm is pulled up to rest along the back of the booth and accentuates the muscles in his shoulders and chest, or with the way his large, steady hand wraps around a bottle of some unidentifiable blue liquid he must have snagged from the kitchen, grip relaxed but strong even when Hunk is unaware of it. Lance's scowl falls, his ears feeling warm from a combination of embarrassment and affection. He crosses the room and flops down beside Hunk, against his open arm. His whole body shudders into a much missed calm as Hunk takes the hint and pulls his arm around Lance's bowed shoulders. 

 

They sit like this, in silence for a time, before Hunk prompts again, "You can tell me anything, buddy. I know you're thinking it will sound stupid, but I won't think so, and it's not."

 

Lance opens and closes his mouth like he is about to speak, but no words come. He frowns at his hands hanging between his knees, his fingers calloused and constellated with small scars, but his nails are manicured as always. Little self-indulgent routines keep him sane in an environment without sunlight, without seasons, with no real notation of time save for the growing of said fingernails, the lengthening of his hair--now almost shaggy enough to pull back and in need of a cut--and the subtle expansion of his body at the shoulders and legs. He wonders if Hunk experiences time this way, in the rhythms of his body and its microcosm of growth and decay. But Hunk seems as immovable as ever, his arm warm around Lance, his jaw strong below a gentle mouth, his chest broad and full with muscle, a sturdy but beautiful display of human architecture. Lance would never admit it, but he feels sometimes, especially sitting beside Hunk's solid vitality, that he is slowly disappearing like a sand dune to the annihilating breath of desert wind. 

 

"I think," Lance finally speaks. "It's cabin fever or something. Need a change of scenery I guess." 

 

Hunk nods, the gesture more placating than affirmative; he can tell Lance is trying to obtain the comfort he needs without leaving himself vulnerable. Rather than needle the problem out of Lance like he normally would, Hunk instead presses a kiss to his hair, taking a breath of his clean scent before pulling away. Lance looks up at him then, lips tilted down at the corners like a puppy whose attention has been suddenly, inexplicably, revoked. 

 

Hunk grins at him and says, "Pack up. We have time to walk around the castle before dinner." 

 

~*~

 

Their walk lasts as long as it takes to get them from the shooting range to Lance's bedroom, somewhere along the way both of their minds turning from a stroll before dinner to devouring each other instead. 

 

"A-ah! Yeah!" Lance cries, his back arching as he bounces on Hunk's lap. Hunk grips his waist tighter at the sensation of Lance clenching around his cock as the Blue Paladin picks up the pace, Hunk's fingers digging into flesh and muscle with the pressure to bruise. 

 

They had barely made it to Lance's bed before their clothes were discarded, kissing and grabbing at each other like falling men clinging to a cliff side. Hunk was still wearing his headband and Lance hadn't bothered to remove his sleeveless undershirt since the important parts of their bodies were accessible to each other.

 

"Feel good?" Hunk says, voice more a rumble in his throat than spoken words.

 

Lance squeezes his eyes tight, nodding and biting his bottom lip in reply as he continues riding Hunk close to climax. Feeling too close to finishing when he watches Lance move like this, Hunk opts for the distraction of pulling Lance toward him with a steady forearm, pressing his face into the topography of Lance's toned chest to mark him with tender, hungry kisses. He rakes his teeth over the delicate edge of a collarbone, pausing to suck in the prime spot below where Lance's t-shirt collar would open and where the skin is still thin enough to bloom red and purple without too much effort. Lance hisses through his teeth, throwing his head back, as his fingers travel up from the expanse of Hunk's shoulders to his hair to thread there and hold Hunk in place. Lance's rhythm sputters, and he comes with a breathy cry on Hunk's stomach. 

 

Even as Lance wriggles in his grip from the overstimulation, fingers tensing and pulling in his hair like he can't decide whether to pull Hunk closer or push him away, Hunk takes over to jerk his hips up in a steadier, more aggressive tempo than Lance could achieve from on top. He pulls back against Lance's vice grip on his hair just enough to see the boy's face after having come undone only to be fucked more: the deep blush painting his cheeks and neck like a messy watercolor, his hair clinging to the sweat on his face or sticking out in odd directions, the red wetness of his swollen lips, the way his eyebrows draw together above glittering brown eyes as he can only watch Hunk use his body with no power or intention to fight back. 

 

"H-hunk, _please,"_ Lance says, and as if by command, Hunk comes hard inside him. 

 

Galaxies of color and light flash into life behind Hunk's eyelids only to dissipate like lens flare around Lance's beaming face when he opens his eyes again. Hunk lowers Lance gingerly to the bed, pulling out of him with a wet squelch; Lance trembles at the sensation of Hunk moving inside him followed by immediate loss. Sweaty and cum-slicked, they lie beside each other, staring up at the ceiling, which is illumined with low yellow light automatically adjusted to the "late" evening hour. Their breathing slows in tandem, chests heaving then settling into calm undulations like ocean waves. Their fingers find each other on top of the ripple of white sheets and twine together. 

 

They'll be late for dinner, Lance thinks somewhere in the back of his mind, behind the drum of his heart and the playback reel of Hunk on his knees in front of Lance, of Hunk's face closing in for a deep kiss, of Hunk's body flexing and arching as he came.. 

 

Rather than recommend cleaning up and rushing to the dining hall--as maybe a more responsible and less after-glowing paladin might--Lance rolls to his side to look at Hunk, pressing his lips to the thick swell of shoulder before him. Hunk tilts his head to smile at Lance, soft and warm and somehow the exact same Hunk that left bruises on Lance's skin and left him open and panting. Hunk releases their hands as Lance nestles closer to curl into the crook of his shoulder, resting his head just above the epicenter of Hunk's heartbeat. Blissed-out, body pliable and a little sore as though after intensive training, Lance sighs and lays a hand on Hunk's chest. He remembers then, why they were here at all, why Hunk had pulled him to his chest and consumed him as soon as they entered Lance's bedroom; he sees the pale stretch of his hand across Hunk's dark chest. Without thinking, he retracts it, curling his arm to his body and unaware of Hunk looking down at him with a furrowed brow.

 

Lance is still searching for the right words; it isn't _just_  skin, he thinks, but a home and a history. Every bad tan line and freckle was a reminder of the Earth's sun, of outdoor work outs and lounging on the beach, of a family, millions of miles away, whose skin was just as loved by the sun as Lance's. He hadn't noticed the same change in Hunk but couldn't be sure if this was just self-absorption or that Hunk, physically and psychologically, was not as changed by space as Lance was.

 

Lance's mind drifts to images of Shiro prior to the Kerberos mission, his hair and skin dark and rich and full of life compared to the ghost of him how they had found after his crash landing in the desert, compared to how he could only imagine Shiro had looked while held in captivity by the Galra. Was that what Lance was experiencing too? Was he, even if with more congenial company...held captive? 

 

"Lance..." Hunk says, tentative and low. "You don't have to bottle things up with me. You know that."

 

Lance doesn't feel like crying, not after being tended to so well by Hunk, so he opts for irritation instead. "I'm not bottling anything. Why do you have to always assume there's a problem?"

 

"Um, ok," Hunk says with a snort, unwilling to play into Lance's antagonizing. "I just saw you _recoil_ from touching me after I fucked you too the moon and back, but sure, nothing's wrong." 

 

Lance might have blushed at Hunk's barefaced words if he wasn't hell bent on being pissed off rather than sad. He sits up gracelessly, flailing a little as he pulls up out of Hunk's embrace on legs and abdomen gelatinized from sex. With a huff, he curls in on himself, pulling his knees to his chest. If he were really angry, Hunk knows, he would have left the bed entirely, secluding himself in the bathroom or pointedly dressing and going about his business as though Hunk weren't there. But he does no such thing, only turns away from Hunk and rests his cheek on the knobby brown peaks of his knees. Hunk resists the urge to reach out and trail his fingers down Lance's spine, walking middle and index along the bones like hiking a mountain ridge. Instead, he watches the steady swell and fall of his back muscles as he breathes, almost too measured like he's trying to hide that he's crying. 

 

With this, Hunk recognizes that their moment has passed and pushes himself up by his forearms. He hesitates, unsure of what battle tactic to employ: tenderness or firmness? Lance could respond well (or poorly) to either, it just depended on the particular source of the problem. Was it insecurity? If so, Hunk could whittle down Lance's defenses with soft words, kisses, reminders that Lance was exceptional in almost every way but but opening up. This hadn't always been the case; even though it was his nature to default to smiles and good humor, Lance used to wear his heart on his sleeve more readily than now. After life threatening battles, months in the void of space, and constant reminders of human smallness and vulnerability, it was no real wonder to Hunk that Lance would have started to recede into himself like this.

 

Battle armor did about as much for the heart as a good attitude did for the flesh. 

 

But if it was something external, not an insecurity but a frustration or concern about what was outside of him, Hunk knew it would be more fruitful--if potentially explosive--to nag at him. Lance complained occasionally about being on the ship, about missing Earth food, about weird smells on the training deck, etc., but he had stopped mentioning home almost altogether beyond passive references to "french fries" or "rain." Nothing about the Garrison, nothing about his family. Hunk knew this was a defense mechanism; better to silence home into nonexistence than dwell on it when there was no guarantee of return. Hunk had to admit that Lance was so skillful at playing this off as focus on the mission at hand rather than a forced submission of his emotions that even he hadn't noticed the contrast of Lance then and Lance now until, well, this moment. 

 

"Lance," Hunk says, deliberately chiding. "You can either keep pouting about whatever it is you're pouting about or you can tell me what's going on and we can fix it together." 

 

He couldn't help the way his voice softened at the end, but the former half of his statement catches Lance's attention enough to earn him a steely glare. 

 

"I'm not  _pouting_ ," he spits. "I'm just--just--"

 

"Sad?" Hunk throws back, sitting up fully so he can loom a little over Lance. "Welcome aboard the SS Cry-Wank, party of five humans and two Alteans. You think you're the only one struggling on this ship?"

 

"I didn't even say that!" Lance says, and he unfolds from his sitting fetal position to crouch in front of Hunk like a wildcat poised to pounce. 

 

"Really?" Hunk says, gesticulating in a way that he felt was ridiculous but seemed to only get Lance more riled up. "Well, I guess you're not wrong because you haven't actually said  _anything_ to me other than total bullshit about 'cabin fever' or whatever."

 

"You wouldn't understand." Hunk only rolls his eyes. 

 

"Okay, I'll bite. What is tormenting you so much that I, your best friend--and lover, I'd like to remind you--wouldn't understand?" Hunk says with folded arms. "Shoot." 

 

Cowed by what was real vehemence in Hunk's voice now, Lance sits back on his heels and looks down at his hands clutching the bed sheet. He drags in a deep breath, shrugs a bit, fidgets beneath Hunk's gaze before forcing the words out like water coughed from his windpipe. 

 

"I'm getting pale, Hunk, and I hate it. It sucks. I look at myself in the mirror, and I don't like how different I look, and I don't feel like anyone else is changing, you're all just--you know--going about your damn business, and I'm here, like, _fading._ "

 

The final word rings in the bedroom like a bell knoll, dissipating into silence between the two boys. Hunk stares at Lance, some unreadable emotion simmering below the skin and darkening his eyes. His heavy brows come together in a deep ravine of worry on his forehead, his expression more intense than Lance had wanted as response. He wanted Hunk to blow him off, to tell him he was imagining things, even to laugh at him. Lance could buy into that lie; he couldn't swallow what Hunk actually gave him.

 

"We're all changing, Lance," Hunk says. "I...okay, I hadn't really noticed until you mentioned it, but yeah you're not as dark as when we first got here, but that's going to happen when you're in an artificial environment for months, you know? I mean, I don't know if you've noticed either but, I'm--" He pulls his eyes away from Lance's to look down at himself with a wince. "I'm losing a lot of weight. It's the stress I think, which is also expected."

 

Lance really looks at Hunk now and does see the way his rub cage and the muscles of his chest appeared in more stark relief, the swell of his stomach more narrow than Lance knew was familiar, and even--how had he never noticed this?--Hunk's face is thinner, cheeks almost imperceptibly hollow. Lance imagines that the other Paladins, not nearly as familiar with Hunk's body as he is, probably would never notice these changes, however heartbreaking, however slight. A lump settles in Lance's throat and he runs his fingers through his hair to diffuse the intensity of their gazes on one another. 

 

Lance bites out a laugh, more bordering on a sob than cut with the sharpness of irony he hoped for. "You're right," he says. "We're all getting dicked by this." 

 

"Yeah," Hunk says, his eyes going soft again. "Space really fucks back, doesn't it?" 

 

With renewed radiance, Lance grins at Hunk and leans into him, resting his forehead on Hunk's chest with love and the exquisite relief of being understood. 

 

~*~

 

"Dude, sh-SSH!" Hunk says.

 

He waves like a bad aircraft guide in front of Pidge who had been monologuing about "what a bad idea" this was and "what if Allura finds out" and other nonsense she didn't _really_ care about as she tinkered with an obscure switchboard on the loading deck wall: lights overhead periodically flicked off then on, a fan whirred somewhere, a fire alarm went off for five heart-arresting seconds. 

 

Pidge shrugs at him with a "the fuck?" expression when he shushes her until she follows his line of sight toward the main entrance from the sleeping quarters--easy access for any midnight drills or attacks. Like Nosferatu emerging from the crypt, Lance staggers onto the deck with eyes half-lidded, shuffling in house slippers and a bath robe thrown haphazard over his pajama pants, blue with little lions on them. One side of his hair sticks up like a chicken's ass, and he presses the heel of his palm against his mouth presumably to smear off drool. 

 

"Hunk, why did my alarm go off in the middle of the night for me to find a note saying"--and here Lance waves his hands for the drama--"'COME TO THE LOADING DECK'?"

 

"Because," Hunk beams, snapping his fingers at Pidge who, on cue manipulates the switch board to drop the flood lights. The only lights remaining in the long vaulted room are those that outline the hangar door for the Yellow Lion. "We're going on a secret mission." 

 

~*~

 

For protective purposes, Hunk and Lance had both slipped into their battle gear and helmets, but nestled in the Yellow Lion's cockpit, Hunk maneuvering the controls with eyes brightened by a smile and Lance reclining unhelpfully in his lap, this excursion into the stars couldn't have felt less like battle. 

 

"So..." Lance says, pulling at a stray thread on the thigh of his suit where it had been sown up from a blade wound. "Where exactly are we going? And why are we going there, like, right now?" 

 

"Well the 'where' is a surprise, Lance," Hunk says. "But the 'why now' is because once we get there we have a very limited window of time to enjoy it before we have to head back to the ship--I mean unless we get caught missing before then which is a distinct possibility."

 

Lance narrows his eyes, purses his lips, and studies Hunk's face for any betrayal of information. When Hunk only meets him with an even smile, Lance folds his arms with a theatrical huff, resigned to whatever (mis)adventure Hunk has led him on. 

 

After about half an hour of smooth sailing, Lance starts drifting to sleep in Hunk's arms, face buried in the crook of his neck. He feels himself slipping into sleep, body a little weightless like floating in the ocean, when Hunk adjusts under him with purpose, reaching around him to the control panel with a series of deft keystrokes. Lance slurps up a string of spittle he was about to leave on Hunk's shoulder as he jolts up, looking around out the cockpit window for any signs of change or danger in their trajectory only to be met by blinding yellow light.

He shields his eyes as they adjust to the abrupt shift from dark space to the fire of a nearby star, hanging leagues head of them in the expanse of space like a golden Christmas ornament. It is then that the Lion dips downward, and pouring over the perimeter of the window looms the pale blue horizon of a planet, surface swirling with whites and purples like a marble. Lance sits up straight in Hunk's lap so that the Yellow Paladin has to crane is neck to look over his shoulder. 

 

"What..." Lance says, voice trailing off as his eyes widen, drinking in the view of a planet so like Earth it shot arrows of longing through his chest. 

 

"GX-771," Hunk says. "I think. I had to do some Google Translate on the Altean after looking at the castle's maps. I did some recon on the climates of planets in nearby systems and this was about as good as I could get. It's small, the rotation period about half of Earth's so the days are really short, but we should have just enough afternoon to enjoy before we need to head back." 

 

During all of this Lance had removed himself from Hunk's lap, pressed a hand against the window, and then turned back to Hunk with tears in his eyes. Hunk is too busy directing the Lion into the white vortex of the planet's atmosphere to notice the way the Blue Paladin is looking at him. 

 

When they breach the cloud bank, the view is better than Hunk could have imagined for this moment, for Lance; a crescent island curves across the left of their window like a long black claw, mountainous and jagged but for a sliver of luminous beach the color of sea foam tucked against a dense tree line. All around them, for hundreds of miles, is water, blue and sparkling in the sunlight as it ripples and laps at the island. They fly in closer, the mountains rising up to meet them as they sink down, down, slowing, before landing on the beach with a great thud and a spray of water and sand. 

 

"Shouldn't have to worry about being bothered," Hunk says, flipping various switches on the control board and overhead, making sure the Lion is properly stationary before extricating himself from the seat, and still oblivious to the way Lance is staring at him from over a shoulder. "This is a pretty young planet, so it looks like most of the life is under the water." 

 

"Ready?" he says, and finally, Hunk looks at Lance as he presses the lever to open the hatch, hot air rushing in and carrying a scent like salt and pine needles. He pauses in his excited rush out of the Lion as Lance approaches him, tears running down his cheeks. The closer he gets the more he starts sniffling, face contorting, until he all but throws himself into Hunk's arms with a sob. Hunk pulls him in tight, nuzzling his head with his lips and murmuring, "Hey, buddy, it's alright. It's nothing." 

 

Lance looks up at him with an expression that can't seem to settle between a scowl and a smile. "No, Hunk," he says. "It's not nothing. It's..."  _Everything,_ he wants to say.  _You're everything._

 

Morbidly delighted by Lance's response to his big surprise, Hunk lifts Lance into his arms, bridal style, eliciting a wild laugh from Lance as they exit the Lion and step out onto the sand. Lance breathes in the fresh, quiet air, listens for the susurration of ocean waves on the beach, and feels,  _finally,_ the sun kiss his skin like a lover, like a dream.

 

Hunk lowers him to his feet, and Lance immediately dances across the bright blue sand, crooning like a crow into the warm air. With a frantic jerk, he pulls off his helmet, letting it fall to the sand before spinning in place, arms outstretched with his face tilted toward the sky. Hunk watches him, mesmerized as the foreign starlight--alien but familiar as home--envelops Lance like a radiant second skin.  _So this is where you've been,_ Hunk thinks, unwilling to draw nearer and break the trance the boy is under. 

 

All at once, Lance stops, still peering up into the blue arc of heaven above them. He closes his eyes, and the inside of his eyelids burn bright red like lanterns. The heat on his cheeks sharp and surreal. Hunk is reminded of their pitstop, of the way Lance had welcomed the moonlight and distant stars to shine down on him, only to be disappointed by cold night. Watching Lance now, the way he seems to glow in conversation with the sunlight, Hunk can only hope that this light might be enough for Lance to carry with him into whatever darkness might lay ahead. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
